Description:
Host-seeking mosquitoes rely on a range of sensory cues to find and approach blood hosts, as well as to avoid host detection. By using odour blends and visual cues that attract anthropophilic mosquitoes, odour-baited traps have been developed to monitor and control human pathogen-transmitting vectors. Although long-range attraction of such traps has already been studied thoroughly, close-range response of mosquitoes to these traps has been largely ignored. Here, we studied the flight behaviour of female malaria mosquitoes ( Anopheles coluzzii ) in the immediate vicinity of a commercially available odour-baited trap, positioned in a hanging and standing orientation. By analysing more than 2500 three-dimensional flight tracks, we elucidated how mosquitoes reacted to the trap, and how this led to capture. The measured flight dynamics revealed two distinct stereotypical behaviours: (i) mosquitoes that approached a trap tended to simultaneously fly downward towards the ground; (ii) mosquitoes that came close to a trap changed their flight direction by rapidly accelerating upward. The combination of these behaviours led to strikingly different flight patterns and capture dynamics, resulting in contrasting short-range attractiveness and capture mechanism of the oppositely oriented traps. These new insights may help in improving odour-baited traps, and consequently their contribution in global vector control strategies.

Abstract:
MOTIVATION: Extracellular vesicles are spherical bilayered proteolipids, harboring various bioactive molecules. Due to the complexity of the vesicular nomenclatures and components, online searches for extracellular vesicle-related publications and vesicular components are currently challenging. RESULTS: We present an improved version of EVpedia, a public database for extracellular vesicles research. This community web portal contains a database of publications and vesicular components, identification of orthologous vesicular components, bioinformatic tools, and a personalized function. EVpedia includes 6,879 publications, 172,080 vesicular components from 263 high-throughput datasets, and has been accessed 〉65,000 times from 〉750 cities. In addition, about 350 members from 73 international research groups have participated in developing EVpedia. This free web-based database might serve as a useful resource to stimulate the emerging field of extracellular vesicle research. Availability and implementation: The web site was implemented in PHP, Java, MySQL and Apache, and is freely available at http://evpedia.info. CONTACT: ysgho@postech.ac.kr.

Notes:
[Auszug] Gliding birds continually change the shape and size of their wings, presumably to exploit the profound effect of wing morphology on aerodynamic performance. That birds should adjust wing sweep to suit glide speed has been predicted qualitatively by analytical glide models, which extrapolated ...

Notes:
A numerical study of the transition between oriented and nonoriented polymers in a model for reptation is presented. An electric field biases a charged polymer to drift in the direction of its leading end. At low fields this bias is not enough to orient the polymer, but at larger fields it succeeds in orienting the polymer with a definite head and tail. The resulting motion depends on the relative magnitudes of the field and the chain length. For a given chain length, the field plays the role of inverse temperature in this transition. The critical field between these “phases” is found to be a non-trivial power of the length of the chain. This scaling extends over two full decades in the coupling parameter and the simulations performed involved 2 × 109 Monte Carlo steps per data point.

Notes:
The role of cAMP and calcium in the induction of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC, E.C.4.1.1.17) activity in the osteogenic sarcoma cell line, UMR 106-01, was studied, with particular interest for parathyroid hormone (PTH). PTH and forskolin dose-dependently induced the ODC activity and the cAMP production. Protein synthesis is involved in the effect of PTH and forskolin on ODC activity but not on cAMP production. Using quin2 we showed that 20 nM PTH and 10 μM forskolin increased the intracellular ionized calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i), thereby offering the possibility for calcium to play a role as cellular mediator in the action of PTH and forskolin in bone. Data obtained with A23187 showed that solely an increase of the [Ca2+]i is not sufficient to stimulate basal or potentiate PTH- and forskolin-induced ODC activity. However, the effects of calcium channel blockers and EGTA on basal and PTH- and forskolin-induced ODC activity point to a specific role for calcium. Moreover, the effects of calcium channel blockers and EGTA on basal and PTH- and forskolin-induced cAMP production indicate that the involvement of calcium in the induction of ODC activity is primarily located at another site than the adenylate cyclase. These data indicate that calcium is involved in the control of basal ODC activity. Furthermore, these data suggest that both cAMP and calcium are involved in the induction of ODC activity by PTH and forskolin. More precisely, ODC activity in UMR 106-01 cells can be induced by PTH and forskolin via a calcium-dependent cAMP messenger system.

Notes:
The effect of activation of protein kinase C on stimulation of ornithine decar-boxylase (ODC) activity and cAMP production was studied in fetal rat osteoblasts. Both phorbol 12-myristate, 13-acetate (PMA), an activator of protein kinase C, and 4α-phorbol, ineffective in activating protein kinase C, failed to stimulate ODC activity and cAMP production. We tested the effect of protein kinase C on stimulation of ODC activity by parathyroid hormone (PTH) and forskolin. In contrast to PTH-stimulated ODC activity, which was not affected by PMA, forskolin-stimulated (1 and 10 μM) ODC activity was dose dependently reduced. PMA (400 nM) reduced both 1 and 10 μM forskolin-stimulated ODC activity to the same level, ∼ 3 nmol CO2/mg protein, which suggests a controlling role of protein kinase C in forskolin-stimulated ODC activity. The study of the effect of protein kinase C on PTH- and forskolin-stimulated cAMP production also revealed differences between PTH and forskolin. When PMA was added simultaneously with PTH (4 and 20 nM) or forskolin (1 and 10 μM) the PTH-stimulated cAMP production was dose-dependently potentiated by PMA, whereas forskolin-stimulated cAMP production was not affected. However, both PTH- and forskolin-stimulated cAMP production was dose-dependently augmented when PMA was added 3 min prior to PTH or forskolin. With increasing preincubation periods (up to 24 h) with PMA instead of a potentiation an inhibition was observed. This inhibition is not due to PTH receptor desensitization, although, on basis of the present results desensitization can not completely be excluded. In all cases 4α-phorbol was without effect. The present results show that protein kinase C modulates stimulation of ODC activity and cAMP production in fetal rat osteoblasts. The modulation of both ODC activity and cAMP production appears to be dependent on the nature of the stimulator. The present data suggest a role for protein kinase C in limiting the cAMP-mediated stimulation of ODC activity in these cells. Furthermore, it is suggested that protein kinase C can interfere at more than one site in the cAMP-generating system.